Bill Belichick’s Terrible Horrible Life
January 12, 2014
“Baseball is what we were. Football is what we have become.” –Mary McGrory
You don’t have to be an MIT physicist to deduce that New England has been killing it lately. Exhibit A: The World Series win. Exhibit B: the Patriots’ continued status at the top of the AFC East, fueled by a series of improbably last-minute comebacks, Brady’s superhuman confidence and Belichick’s analytic genius (more on this later). Exhibit C: The rise of Eggs as the most chill street spot on the East Coast and possibly in the United States (more on this later as well). Even the Celtics and Bruins have won championships in the past few years.
The only victory left for New Englanders is an honest-to-G*d Patrick John Ladd video part. For a board company video. #Physical or iTunes.
A Little Something Re: The FTC Book
December 25, 2013
In 2009, a Crailtap employee told me that Smyth was working on an EMB book, or some shit. The status of said tome remains uncertain, but, until its completion, the recently released FTC Book is as close as we’re gonna get.
If one sat down to write a book about #local skate shops as “thing,” odds are that certain narrative motifs would emerge: owners mentoring local rippers, older dudes vibing, rivalries with other local shops. Some dudes achieved success via the #industry, some dudes flamed out and cultivated drug problems, some dudes faded out of skating and got a job working construction (via Springsteen, natch). And of course, some dudes quit at their peak to “get really into cars.”*
Indeed, these types of stories are as old as the hills to anyone who came up in a community with a local shop. However, in retail and most other ventures, timing is everything. FTC differs because its ascendance coincided with that of A) a series of new, cool-as-fuck companies B) innovators who, seemingly as an afterthought, were inventing a new genre of skating every afternoon and C) SF’s status as skate Mecca, with hometown heroes nationwide buying beaters and making the pilgrimage–Welsh most notably, but I’m sure you know one or two who made it or didn’t quite get there. From this anthropological standpoint, it’s import resonates to this day, as variants of the plaza skating culture continue to thrive and replicate. Case in point: Stalin.
And the videos. I can’t remember when/where I first saw the first one; probably out in front of Supreme. If you haven’t watched Finally in a while, it’s probably the most low-impact vid ever; the biggest drop is probably Carroll’s ollies that gap at the Wallenberg upper playground. Penal Code, canonical at this point, continues the oldies/beats/breaks/some regional hip-hop school of music supervision from Goldfish; pretty sure it was the first time I had heard “That Lady” since Paul’s Boutique. It was definitely in heavy rotation out in front of Supreme for a couple years. To paraphrase Meza, these videos maintain #relevance because of their organic, skating-the-same-spots-every-day-with-our-friends vibe–a vibe that is hard to fake via orchestrated high-five lifestyle footage.
For obsessives such as myself, The FTC Book takes the reader into a wormhole that was previously only accessible through apocryphal tales and early SLAP, which seemed more plugged-in to the EMB scene than Thrasher–a rivalry of sorts detailed in the book itself. It also answers quantum-level skate nerd questions like “who first started skating suede Pumas?” and “Did Jovontae Jeans actually exist?” Along those lines. the street-level economic details of the scene, via the infamous tab book, are also interesting as fuck. Does any other shop still maintain such a system? More importantly, do any currently-active skate spots keep the tradition of the open-air product market alive?
ANYWAY, the core of the book is its interviews; every notable EMB affiliate contributes a narrative, save Henry Sanchez. As the best dude out from 1991-1994, it would be fascinating to hear his take, but you know how that goes…
One question remains, though: if Carroll had skated to “Limelight,”would Serge have skated to “La Villa Strangiato”?
You can obtain The FTC Book here or at any FTC store in the US, Japan, or Spain
*is this a “thing” all over the country? worldwide?
ps. twitter, insta, tumblr, and Vine – @frozenincarbonite
PREVIOUSLY: Lonny Peoples Interview
Total Loss: Skate Cars of the 1990’s
November 10, 2013
scan via skately.com
“the NSX pull out the driveway/feelin’ like Scarface. desperado on the case”
-Royal Flush, 1997
“Right when I moved to California, I bought a ’95 Civic Coupe. I had it for no longer than a month. I completely totaled the fucking car.”
-Caine Gayle, 1997*
I first saw the 101 War Report promo on a VHS cassette tape that also contained Da Deal is Dead, some SMA video, and maybe Vision Barge at Will. In addition to the innovative “jogger” narrative element, the footage of McNatt piloting a silver NSX seemed to communicate a theme. Like, a futuristic car for mad futuristic skating, or some shit. The NSX symbolized Rocco’s New World Order and foreshadowed Clinton-era economic prosperity. While conceptualized as a supercar or some shit, it still had that Civic DNA deep down in its rear-situated engine.
2013 Song of the Summer/Video Part of the Summer Retrospective
September 17, 2013
DATELINE: IBIZA
In the dead of night, a Bell AB-212 descends onto the heliport of David Guetta’s Ibiza compound. A slim, tall African-American lady descends the stairs onto the tarmac. Her hair is styled in a mullet, or some shit.
A few minutes later, another helicopter lands, transporting a Caucasian female with an aggressive platinum blonde hairstyle. She looks like she could use a sandwich.
Neither has any idea why Mr. Guetta has summoned them. A few minutes later, when @mikewillmadeit, French Montana, Future, Nicki Minaj, Flo Rida, Pitbull, and Katy Perry ascend the helipad stairs, everything becomes clear.
Their mission, should they chose to accept it: craft The Song Of the Summer 2013.
This did not happen, but it kinda did…
Canadian Gino
July 31, 2013
“Remember how cold it was when you took the bus up to Montreal?”
“Yeah.”
“Winnipeg is colder.”
The above is an excerpt from an internet discussion between me and my homie in MTL. I think I had mentioned that Winnipeg seemed like a tight place to live, based on a)various Green Apple-affiliated videos I had seen b) the plaza that was one of the first ones that seemed to replicate Barcelona architecture and c)the return of the Jets.
He went on to describe a bleak, economically devastated metropolis where native gangs rule the streets at night. Based on Supper’s Ready and Modern Love though, Winnipeg appears to be a spot-filled metropolis where the particularly Canadian sense of humor–via SCTV/ Bill Murray–flourishes in skate vid form. Read the rest of this entry »
Infinite Crab Meats by Byron Crawford
One of the fun mental games we like to play at this web site is “Would [historical figure ] have skated?” I have created a spin-off: “What would [historical figure] have become had the internet been around?” Think of it like “Modern Seinfeld” in reverse, or some shit.
ANYWAY, do you think Bukowski would have been #Bukowski had the internet been around back then? Instead of blindly mailing off poems and short stories to pulp mags and periodicals, would he had started a blog—at the very least, a tumblr devoted to chicks with prominent calf muscles?
forgot to cancel Hulu Plus
The homie Galen has the skate book review game locked down. However, the following three things recently happened at the same damn time. First, after a year and a half, I finished the Keith Richards bio, which I had borrowed from my old man. Concurrently, @byroncrawford (one of my two favorite currently active writers) came out with a new book and hooked up an e-copy. A day or two later, Fat Thumb Publishing hit me up about reviewing Better If You Don’t Come Back — probably the first novel that addresses skate culture in a micro sense. So there you go. Check back in a week, I guess? This post is taking an extra long time cause I actually have to read stuff instead of formulating a thesis based on a video with some crooked grinds ‘n shit.
In the meantime, hit me on (in descending order of my activity) that twitter, on that insta, or that tumblr.
Physical Graffiti
February 18, 2013
“What are you, some kind of masochist?,” as the one-shot intro to Pretty Sweet appeared on a drop-down screen at a local bar.
My friend posed this question to me after I told him that I had still not seen the vid almost a month after its digital web-based release. There is a good reason for this.
My 2001-era heavy-as-fuck tube tv had died, so I acquired a high definition tv as a replacement. Knowing that the release of Pretty Sweet loomed, my other friend recommended a blu-ray player because of all the aps that come with it, like Netflix and shit like that. So I had this whole new setup–just a chill place to watch physical skate vids, the NBA, and “Girls”(natch). I mean, if this is the last vid part for Carroll and them, I’m gonna watch it on my own terms, not like some suburban tri-state area hedge fund manager watching pRon in his upstairs office.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
#COMING SOON — Physical Graffiti: Physical Media & The Life Cycle of a Hip-Hop White Guy
January 24, 2013
self-imposed deadline–end of the month
#prettysweet and #parentaladvisory : a Venn Diagram w/ BONUS: a year-end list of the top 5 Frozen in Carbonite posts of 2012
December 23, 2012
click to enlarge
“Videos are dead! No, wait! STOP THE PRESSES! Full-length skate videos are back, bro!” That’s what Transworld said, in paraphrased form. Finally, after obtaining a physical of Pretty Sweet, I carved out a chunk of time in which to view it, approximately a month after its premiere. However, with my local shop still awaiting shipment of the physical DGK film, I said “fuck it” and downloaded. More content based on these two films #comingsoon, but for now, I concluded that the occasion called for another Venn diagram. Indeed, this expansion into the realm of cinematic production values opens up a pandora’s box of new angles for skate video deconstruction. For example, does the narrative in Parental Advisory take place in the same alternate universe as every other skate video narrative?* Are Fabes and Minnick on the same police force as Hosoi from Blind What If? Do they serve the same law enforcement entity as the nebulous surveillance team from the A-Team section in RVD2?
ANYWAY, more content both relating to these vids and dealing with other stuff coming next year–maybe sooner. For now, I offer a year-end list of THE TOP 5 FROZEN IN CARBONITE POSTS OF 2012:
March – “Biebelism 101”
May – “A War to End All Wars”
July – “A Brief History of Anglophilia”
September – ” ‘Bookmark Me, Maybe?’–2012 Song of the Summer/Video Part of the Summer Retrospective”
November: “Freudian Shoe Review: Nike Challenge Court”
*This is a Klosterman concept–the question of whether works of fiction take place in separate universes or one fictional alternate universe. However, can’t remember which essay in order to properly cite.
frozen in carbonite 